Related papers: A Light-Driven Microgel Rotor
Microgels are often discussed as well-suited model system for soft colloids. In contrast to rigid spheres, the microgel volume and, coupled to this, the volume fraction in dispersion can be manipulated by external stimuli. This behavior is…
Microorganisms are able to overcome the thermal randomness of their surroundings by harvesting energy to navigate in viscous fluid environments. In a similar manner, synthetic colloidal microswimmers are capable of mimicking complex…
Flagellated microorganisms can swim at low Reynolds numbers and adapt to changes in their environment. Specifically, the flagella can switch their shapes or modes through gene expression. In the past decade, efforts have been made to…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are few dynamic simulation tools available to accurately predict the motion or performance of untethered microrobots as they…
We report a versatile method for executing controllable high-speed rotation of nanowires by AC voltages applied to multiple electrodes. The rotation of the nanowires can be instantly switched on or off with precisely controlled rotation…
Viscoelastic fluids impact the locomotion of swimming microorganisms and can be harnessed to devise new types of self-propelling devices. Here we report on experiments demonstrating the use of normal stress differences for propulsion. Rigid…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion depending on the environment in which they find themselves. One mode is swimming by blebbing or other shape changes, and in this paper we analyze a class of…
It is known that obstacles can hydrodynamically trap bacteria and synthetic microswimmers in orbits, where the trapping time heavily depends on the swimmer flow field and noise is needed to escape the trap. Here, we use experiments and…
RMs (reverse micelles) provide a controlled system for studying the unique structural and dynamic behaviors of confined water, thus gaining a general insight into the behavior or water under confinement and at interfaces. This study employs…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are no good dynamic simulation tools to predict the motion or performance of a microrobot as it moves against a substrate. At…
Recent experiments and numerical simulations have shown that certain types of microorganisms "reflect" off of a flat surface at a critical angle of departure, independent of the angle of incidence. The nature of the reflection may be active…
Microswimmers are sub-millimeter swimming microrobots that show potential as a platform for controllable locomotion in applications including targeted cargo delivery and minimally invasive surgery. To be viable for these target…
The influence of shape fluctuations on deformable thermosensitive microgels in aqueous solution is investigated by dynamic light scattering (DLS) and depolarized dynamic light scattering (DDLS). The systems under study consist of a solid…
Motivated by recent advances in vesicle engineering, we consider theoretically the locomotion of shape-changing bilayer vesicles at low Reynolds number. By modulating their volume and membrane composition, the vesicles can be made to change…
The process of self-morphing in curved surfaces found in nature, such as with the growth of flowers and leaves, has generated interest in the study of self-morphing bilayers, which has been used in many soft robots or switchers. However,…
A steady fluid flow, called microstreaming, can be generated in the vicinity of a micro-bubble excited by ultrasound. In this article, we use this phenomenon to assemble and power a microfabricated rotor at rotation speeds as high as 625…
Vortical flows of rotating particles describe interactions ranging from molecular machines to atmospheric dynamics. Yet to date, direct observation of the hydrodynamic coupling between artificial micro-rotors has been restricted by the…
Hypothesis: A broad range of phenomena, such as emulsification and emulsion stability, foam formation or liquid evaporation, are closely related to the dynamics of adsorbing colloidal particles. Elucidation of the mechanisms implied is key…
We discuss the locomotion of a thermally driven elastic two-sphere microswimmer with internal feedback control that is realized by the position-dependent friction coefficients. In our model, the two spheres are in equilibrium with…
Artificial microswimmers, nano and microrobots, are essential in many applications from engineering to biology and medicine. We present a Stokesian Dynamics study of the dynamical properties and efficiency of one of the simplest artificial…